Christina Lampert '16

Major:

Marketing

Minor:

Leadership, Ethics, and Organizational Sustainability

Outcome Opportunity:

Internship

Position:

Advertising Operations Intern

Company:

Hulu

How did you land your current position?

I actually was on SJUcareers and I was RSVP-ing to an event, however, I decided to also look at the jobs one day and as I was scrolling down I saw the Hulu label and I went in and I read about the job description. I saw that there was a link to reach out to an SJU alum who had actually posted the job. So with that I was able to find out more about it and realized that it was definitely something that I wanted to go forward and apply for.

What does a normal day look like?

It’s kind of hard to explain. In short, I was the one putting the advertisements that you see into the Hulu shows which required a lot of technical training. I was working with pieces of code and putting those pieces of code onto pixels which then I put onto the advertisements to put into the system. So all in all that’s called advertising ad trafficking, so I was an ad trafficker. And then, aside from that, I would stage the ads on the Hulu site and I would create presentations that would be sent off to clients so they can see their ads being implemented and how they would look to a viewer. Those were my two main focuses.

Were there any other components of the internship outside of those two main projects?

The Vice President of Sales actually sent us off to a digital advertising summit. It was a really great experience, we listened to the Vice President of Advertising for Heineken and Roku, and we really got involved in what was going on in the industry. We also presented our insights attained from this summit to the entire national Hulu sales team with, I think, four offices around the country were on the call. So we got to present live to the NYC office, but also to other offices as well which was a really unique experience.

They also had a great program where they did a lot of intern specialty things. One of the coolest ones was we actually got to meet Amy Poehler and work her red carpet premier for one of her shows that she produced as a Hulu original. So they actually specifically let the interns work this red carpet which was absolutely incredible. They took us to Yankees games, they sent us to the museum of the moving image, a lot of really fun events that the interns were involved in.

What do you like most about/ and find most challenging in your position?

Like most: What I liked most about it was it was something that I had never in a million years, first of all, even knew existed, or thought I would be able to dive into for nine weeks. Being able to put on a tech-y hat and understand what goes on in the tech world and seeing the back end of how it all comes together was something that I really loved.

Most challenging: Everything was challenging at first. I was trained with all the entry level employees so it was kind of hard all at once, this persona, thinking you’re an intern but also having the same workload as an entry level employee and kind’ve being, not thrown into all the training, but it was a lot of really heavy duty training that was definitely a lot to handle at first when it’s a whole new way of talking, because I had never worked with code before. So that in itself was something I was so unfamiliar with, so it definitely took a month to get used to everything and to feel literally the smallest bit confident in what I was working on.

What is some advice that you would give to students who are currently searching for internships?

I had the option of either doing a Skype interview or going in person, and I didn’t have to go in person but I still went. I think going there is really beneficial, and not only for their sake, since it shows that you really care and be there in person, but also for your sake, to see if it’s the right fit for you and to see if you click with the people there because you’re going to be spending a significant amount of time with those people. I think you should take as many opportunities as you can get to go into the company and dive deeper and deeper each time, whether it’s first taking someone out to lunch and then going in for an informational interview, asking to meet with more people on the team, I think the more face to face interaction you can have with as many people in the company as you can before being hired, try to do that. And then that will most likely lead to the best fit I think.